Handmade Electronic Music - the Art of Hardware Hacking by Nicolas Collins
Handmade Electronic Music - the Art of Hardware Hacking
By Nicolas Collins
Illustrated by Simon Lonergan
Book Description
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking provides a long-needed, practical, and engaging introduction for students of electronic music, installation and sound-art to the craft of making--as well as creatively cannibalizing--electronic circuits for artistic purposes. Designed for practioners and students of electronic art, it provides a guided tour through the world of electronics, encouraging artists to get to know the inner workings of basic electronic devices so they can creatively use them for their own ends.
Handmade Electronic Music introduces the basic of practical circuitry while instructing the student in basic electronic principles, always from the practical point of view of an artist. It teaches a style of intuitive and sensual experimentation that has been lost in this day of prefabricated electronic musical instruments whose inner workings are not open to experimentation. It encourages artists to transcend their fear of electronic technology to launch themselves into the pleasure of working creatively with all kinds of analog circuitry.
Contents
Part I: Starting
Acknowledgements
Forward by David Behrman
Introduction
Chapter 1: Getting Started
Tools and materials needed.
Chapter 2: The Seven Basic Rules of Hacking
General advice.
Part II: Listening
Chapter 3: Circuit Sniffing
Using radios and coils to eavesdrop on hidden electromagnetic music.
Sidebar #1: Mortal Coils
Chapter 4: In/Out
Speaker as microphone, microphone as speaker - the symmetry of it all.
Chapter 5: The Celebrated Jumping Speaker of Bowers County
Twitching loudspeakers with batteries.
Chapter 6: How to Solder
An essential skill.
Chapter 7: How to Make a Contact Mike
Using piezo disks to pick up tiny sounds.
Chapter 8: Turn You Tiny Wall Into a Speaker
Resonating objects with piezo disks, transformers and motors.
Chapter 9: Tape Heads
Playing credit cards with hand-held tape heads.
Chapter 10: A Simple Air Mike
Cheap condenser mike elements make great microphones.
Part III: Touching
Chapter 11: Laying of Hands
Transforming a portable radio into a synthesizer by making your skin part of the circuit.
Chapter 12: Tickle the Clock
Finding the clock circuit in toys.
Chapter 13: Hack the Clock
Changing the clock speed for cool new noises.
Chapter 14: Ohm's Law for Dummies
How to understand resistors.
Chapter 15: Beyond the Pot
Photocells, pressure pads, and other ways to control and play your toy.
Chapter 16: Switches
How to understand different switches, and even make your own.
Chapter 17: Jack, Batt & Pack
Finishing touches: powering and packaging your hacked toy.
Part IV: Building
Chapter 18: World's Simplest Oscillator
Six oscillators on a 20-cent chip, guaranteed to work.
Chapter 19: From Breadboard to Circuit Board
How to solder up your first homemade circuit.
Chapter 20: More Oscillators
Oscillators that modulate each other.
Chapter 21: Even More Oscillators
Dividers, feedback loops and instability; using oscillators as clocks for toys.
Chapter 22: On/Off
Gating, ducking, tremolo and panning.
Chapter 23: Amplification and Distortion
A simple circuit that goes from clean preamp to total distortion.
Chapter 24: Analog to Digital Conversion, Sort of
Modulating other audio sources with your oscillators.
Part V: Looking
Chapter 25: Video Music/Music Video
Translating video signals into sound, hacking cheap camera circuits,
Chapter 26: LCD Art
Making animated modern daguerreotypes and alternative video projectors.
Part VI: Finishing
Chapter 27: Mixers, Matrices and Processing
Very simple, very cheap, very clean mixers, and ways of configuring lots of circuits.
Chapter 28: A Little Power Amplifier
A cheap & simple amplifier.
Chapter 29: Analog to Digital Conversion, Really
Connecting sensors to computers using game controllers.
Chapter 30: Power Supplies
If you must, here's how to plug into the wall with minimal risk.
Appendices
Appendix 1: Resources
Where to find information and materials.
Appendix 2: References and Notes
Appendix 3: Inventory
What you need to do the projects in this book.
Appendix 4: The Rules of Hacking and the Laws of the Avant Garde
A recapitulation.
Appendix 5: Notes for the audio CD
Appendix 6: Illustration Credits
posted by petriear at Sunday, February 19, 2006
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